Worth it or not?: Bertrand Russell's Principia Mathematica

As a physics undergrad, I feel that my understanding of mathematics is lacking – not in terms of how to do something, but in terms of why you'd do something. For example, why take the integral of Schrödinger's Equation? Why not derive it? Why derive velocity to find acceleration? (These are examples so you can see where I'm coming from)

So because of this, I'm interested in purchasing Principia Mathematica by one of my favorite philosophers, Bertrand Russell. Is it a worthy purchase? Will it help me understand the concepts, or is there anyone book you recommend?

As a physics undergrad, I feel that my understanding of mathematics is lacking – not in terms of how to do something, but in terms of why you'd do something. For example, why take the integral of Schrödinger's Equation? Why not derive it? Why derive velocity to find acceleration? (These are examples so you can see where I'm coming from)

So because of this, I'm interested in purchasing Principia Mathematica by one of my favorite philosophers, Bertrand Russell. Is it a worthy purchase? Will it help me understand the concepts, or is there anyone book you recommend?

Thanks for your help,
Daniel

I think Bertrand Russell is one of the greatest minds of the last two centuries and all his books are worth reading

even more than once, but his Principia is a very, overwhelmingly technical book. I don't think there are lots of people

who read it completely. You better check first what it is about before you buy it to read it, though I guess

Principia Mathematica could be read as a historial document, in the same manner that you could read Newton's Principia as a historial document in physics. Reading Newton's original work won't teach the modern approaches to classical phyics and it doesn't use modern notation. Reading Principia Mathematica won't teach you the modern approaches to mathematical logic and it doesn't use modern notation.

I don't know anything about Principia except that the author attempts to build everything from a rigid logic and set theory frame work and the entire work will come crashing down if an inconsistency is found.

Considering this I think the whole thing is kind of pointless. I think intuition as to why 1 + 1 = 2 is far more valuable then constructing the abstract mathematical object of 1 and 2 from it.